In his famous encyclical _Præclara_--aptly called the “Testament of Leo XIII.”--which was addressed on June 20, 1894, to “Princes and Peoples,” His Holiness speaks to his wayward and error-bound children in words of surpassing tenderness and deepest paternal solicitude. There is not a word of reproach, not a single expression to wound even the most sensitive.[344] He refers lovingly to the East, “whence salvation spread over the whole world”; to the resplendent history of their venerable sees; to the Greeks who had occupied the Chair of Peter and had edified the Church by their learning and virtue. In his plea for reunion he declares: “No great gulf separates us; except for a few smaller points we agree so entirely with you that it is from your teaching, your customs and rites that we often take proofs for Catholic dogma.”[345] And referring to certain unfounded charges that had often been made against the Holy See, he declares in the most positive terms that no Pope has the slightest desire to diminish the dignity and rights of any of the great Patriarchates of the East. And as for their venerable customs “we shall,” he assures them, “provide in a broad and generous spirit.” Had the occupant of the Patriarchal See of Constantinople been imbued with the spirit of his illustrious countryman, Cardinal Bessarion, who labored so strenuously for Church reunion at the Council of Florence, and had he been actuated by a tithe of the zeal and charity and love of peace that so distinguished the great St. Athanasius of Alexandria, there is reason to believe that the Sovereign Pontiff’s gentle and noble letter would have met a very different reception and that measures would have been taken ere this to terminate a schism which during ten long centuries has been so prolific of evil to untold millions of souls redeemed at an infinite price. But, unfortunately for the Eastern Churches, as well as for the Church of Rome, Anthimos VII was then Œcumenical Patriarch. His offensive and abusive reply to the gracious and generous appeal of the renowned successor of the Fisherman shows that in character and zeal for souls and ardent love of the Church of Christ he was the very opposite of the great Pontiff whose overtures he so disdainfully and so ignominiously rejected.